


The Long, Desperate Life of Anakin Skywalker

by idinathoreau



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015), Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Battlefront II, Canon Compliant, Gen, Reincarnation, The Clone Wars - Freeform, The Last Jedi - Freeform, a few of the novels, and some creative liberties, basically the fan theory that Rey is Anakin reincarnated in narrative form, events from the Force Awakens, mostly - Freeform, reincarnation theory, the original trilogy, the prequels, with canon events
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-05
Updated: 2018-01-23
Packaged: 2019-02-28 14:38:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 10,984
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13273566
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/idinathoreau/pseuds/idinathoreau
Summary: Rey does not know who she is or where she came from. All she knows is that there are some things she just knows and things she is mysteriously good at. Like speaking multiple languages and imagining an ocean when she has never seen one. There is only one thing she knows with absolute certainty: sand is awful.





	1. Part 1: The Dreams

**Author's Note:**

> Basically, a narrative way for me to express my thoughts on the theory of Rey being the reincarnation of Anakin (not my theory) and how it might tie into the movies and my own imagined childhood for Rey. Will include events from The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi as well as references to events from the Original Trilogy, Prequel Trilogy, and The Clone Wars/Rebels TV series. May throw in a few of the references to canon novels/games but I make no promises.

There were times when she dreamed. 

There were nights when the scorching heat of Jakku’s suns faded and a cold dread blanketed the sands. On those nights, Rey awoke from half-remembered dreams hating the desert and everything about it. She would angrily blink the sand from her eyes and beat her clothes roughly, trying to make every last grain go away. It never did. And by morning, she was crawling through scrap again, sand irritating every exposed bit of skin and then some. 

Her life was dominated by sand. It restricted her scavenging, ate away at the few pieces she did recover, and crawled slowly but consistently into her home no matter how hard she tried to keep it out. But it was merely a fact of life. It was only in the heated aftermath of those dreams that she found the will to hate it so passionately. 

She supposed other people dreamed as she did, but she never asked. It seemed far too intimate a question for any of the people she interacted with. How did you ask one what they dreamed of?

On the nights she dreamed, she always had the strange sense of existing outside of herself. It wasn’t an out-of-body experience. Rather, she never felt like herself when she dreamed. She felt older, stronger, and for the most part, happier. Almost always, she was surrounded by others. No matter how many times she might have the same dream, whilst in one, it always felt new.

In some, she was just in the desert, collecting scrap and cleaning parts. It would have felt mundane if she hadn’t had the strongest certainty inside the dream that she was not on Jakku. In these dreams, she felt very young. 

Sometimes she dreamed of other worlds: of a planet completely covered by a city, gleaming in the sunlight and winking with reflections off of millions of vehicles constantly in motion. Seeing it would fill her first with a sense of wonderment. How were there this many people in the galaxy? In some dreams, it felt more like coming home.

Her favorite was a dream about a race. She had no idea what vehicle she was piloting or why she was racing but the thrill always invigorated her. To her constant disappointment, she always woke up before the conclusion. 

Once, she dreamed of an asteroid. A base was drilled into the side of it and absolutely stuffed to the brim with supplies and weapons. The sight made her heart swell. She felt an unyielding compassion for so many faceless beings, beings that these supplies would save. But the dream always ended with running, with her faceless companions yelling at her to flee, to leave everything behind so they would escape alive. The supplies always burned, no matter how long she waited to escape.

Whenever she awoke from terrible dreams like that, she imagined her island to calm herself. Rey had never seen an ocean but several of the scavengers and occasional passersby the outpost spoke of an endless body of water, the moving waves that never stopped, the scent and taste of salt. One visitor had spoken of islands to her: formations of rock that stood alone in the center of all that water, “like this outpost against the desert” the Mon Calamari had said. She was intrigued by the metaphor. It conjured such a feeling in her that she created a place in her mind, so perfectly rendered it was as if she had seen the waters herself. So often did she consider that image that whenever her mind was thick with the memories of her dreams or her heart was heavy with loneliness, the island came to mind unbidden. It was always waiting for her, patient and steady against the raging ocean. 

***

After she left Jakku, the dreams changed. 

Something had shifted within her after Starkiller Base. It felt like a dam had been broken and things she’d never acknowledged before poured into her consciousness. Being so close to so much life and greenery sent her senses whirling and her mind spinning. Her first night in the Resistance base, she’d awoken suddenly and touched her lips curiously as they tingled. For a brief moment, she felt as if someone had been close to her…holding her and kissing her tenderly. She had never felt the pleasures of the carnal…but she had been so certain of the experience. 

General Organa, for as brief as she had known her, seemed to inherently sense the confusion within Rey. The older woman had sought her out not long after that dream and invited her to talk. Rey told her of her dreams, of the certainty she felt within them, of feeling feelings that she had never felt and the sense that she knew things inside of dreams but could not grasp all of them in the waking world. 

Leia heard her frustrations with a calm patience and told her a story about someone she should not have been able to remember. A woman she had known only for a few minutes right after her birth. The General spoke of the memory with tenderness and sadness. So powerful were her emotions that Rey felt them herself. She asked if this was part of the Force. 

Leia only replied that Luke would know. 

Rey also told her about the vision she had had when she held the saber for the first time; describing in particular detail the raspy breath that had begun it and terrified her so with its accompanying pain. Leia had no response to that but her face tightened considerably.

Rey assumed it was because she had mentioned the Generals’ son.

***  
Her first night on Ahch-To, on the island she had been picturing for so long, a horrifying nightmare came upon her. 

She was holding a body in her arms in a dark place…someone very precious to her. Even as she held them tighter, she felt their life slip away. They died in her arms. Rage filled her. Such rage that she drew the saber at her side and lashed out. 

Again.

Again.

Again.

Life after life fell under the blade. Nothing could stop her as her white-hot rage coiled inside of her gut and strength flooded her veins…

She awoke with a burning pain in her stomach and writhed onto the floor, where she dry-heaved until dawn, sickened at how she had embraced such anger. How easily she had turned to destruction. How satisfying it had been.

In the misty light of the rising sun, as the phantom passions of the dream finally faded in the salty air, her exhausted mind grimly traced the source of the new dreams at last. Rey sat up and regarded the shiny weapon alongside the bed. She had kept it close to her since the fight on Starkiller Base, its proximity as comforting as her staff had been for all those years. But on that morning, she regarded Luke’s old blade with dread. She now recognized why the dreams were different, why they were more vivid and passionate now. Her mind roiled with unexplored ideas, unbridled power pulsed at her fingertips.

It was the same feeling she had had after first touching the lightsaber. It had unlocked all of this for her. 

She never told Luke about the dreams. He didn’t seem to care. But she knew that he sensed her turmoil as assuredly as Leia had. 

He offered no absolutions.


	2. Part 2: The Ships

When she was a small child, learning to scavenge, she used to follow the grownups. She was small and skinny, perfect for crawling into vents and ducts for the hazardously placed oxygenators that every scavenger coveted. She wasn’t big enough to haul them away on her own so the grownups took everything she couldn’t stuff in her pockets and belt pouch. 

But she had to keep following them. They knew how to get into the Star Destroyers, which panels to remove to keep the old, upended structure from crashing down on them. They were strong enough to shift debris aside. But once inside, they argued and bickered in various languages about which direction to go, how to interpret the massive ship’s layout while it was buried at an angle in the sands and badly burned. 

From the outside, the skeletons of the Empire’s might were terrifying. They were behemoth shadows that pocketed the desert, faceless but brutal overlords of their lives. At any second, one could lose its fragile grip on the sands and come smashing down, killing all the insignificant scavengers inside in the process. 

But once she was within the walls of steel, the massive ship intrigued her. Bored with the grownups’ arguing, Rey wandered off on her own. Her feet shuffled down the layout confidently even with the ship tilted and she quickly discovered an exposed bridge with valuable scavenge. On that first day inside the Destroyer, Rey carried back a small but valuable hyperdrive motivator that earned her a full portion. 

Unfortunately, the grownups soon learned of her abilities and took to following her when she entered ships. Once she had led them to a profitable place, they pushed her aside and tore into the scrap, leaving nothing but spare gears and broken wires for her to scrape up and take back. Her hauls and portions suffered and she grew hungry and desperate. Eventually, she learned to scavenge on her own; finding her own entrances into the Destroyers and listening for the signs of a collapse.

The ships were massive and intimidating but she still felt like she knew them. Even with the innards all twisted up and corroded, Rey could tell when she stood in the engine room versus the exhaust ports. She knew the difference between the skeletal gunner positions and escape pod hatches, something not even the most experienced scavengers could discern without stripping into the wires. When she was alone in these ships, Rey didn’t mind the silence of Jakku so much. The echoing, black interiors of the Destroyers weren’t exactly comforting but they were familiar. 

She never could figure out why. As she grew older and memories of her childhood crawling in the vents faded, she attributed her knowledge and amenity to the atmosphere of the interior to luck and then experience. After all, it was impossible to not become an expert at navigating a hollowed-out starship when one crawled through them every day.

***

Piloting most vehicles was second nature to her. Before she was big enough to haul away anything more useful than a valve, a kindly scavenger had offered her part of his cut simply to drive his speeder after a day’s scavenging. When he learned that she could drive better than most of the other urchins, he tried to swindle her into driving for him full-time. It took Rey two cycles to escape his exploitative scheme. 

On days when he was feeling generous — or when scavenging was bad and the hunger gnawing in her belly would not be ignored — Milet Von, the Nema Outpost’s ships dealer let her test-drive a few of his new ships. It was risky work (most of the things he picked up were itching to explode if pushed too hard) but for two portions a day, Rey would do anything. 

The ships always had their atmosphere configurations disabled before she could touch them, but driving them along the surface of the planet was better than nothing. If she was being honest, sometimes she wondered if asking Milet to test his ships full time would seem too desperate. 

Flying was exhilarating. The first time she’d been assigned to test drive a ship, it was an ancient Nabooian fighter that had all its paint scratched off and canons stripped. The left thruster worked at half the capacity of the right and the brakes were all but worn out. Deep in the engine was a faulty fuse just waiting for the right amount of pressure to pop. It was a death-trap. But Rey hadn’t realized this until she returned from her test flight and saw Milet staring at her like she had just broken Han Solo’s record on the Kessel Run. 

He always seemed to throw his worst ships at her. Maybe he was hoping she’d die. Or perhaps he was jealous of her golden touch. Either way, Rey made flawless flights on barely-operational fighters, haulers, and speeders of any kind. Once she was airborne, everything just made sense. She could sense a fault in an engine before she’d even reached full speed and compensate her flying to avoid disaster. After a time, she grew more confident.

Milet was very strict about the times she had to return his property. But he never said where she could or couldn’t take them. The dunes became her stomping ground; she traced her scavenging routes in speeders and starships of every kind, feeling how to turn and practicing trick maneuvers she had heard described in stories about the Rebellion and the Battle of Jakku. By the time she was sixteen, she had perfected an upside-down feint move in two types of fighters. 

But after some time, Unkar Plutt refused to let her pilot ships anymore. 

Rey supposed it was because she took such obvious relish in it. Unkar did seem to despise anything that brought anyone but himself pleasure. But she knew the reason. It was taking up too much of her time. And without her scavenge, meager as it was, Unkar’s profits were sliding. He’d paid off Milet to prevent her from working in his shipyard.

So she crawled back into the ships, among the sands and spent her days imagining new ways to pilot the fighters she had briefly tasted. 

More than anything, she wanted to try out a fully-functional starship. What did it feel like to leave the planet? Would any of her maneuvers work in space? It was a fantasy, but a compelling one to pass the empty hours scavenging the skeletons of ships. 

Rey did not touch a starship again until she was nineteen.

***

Several days before the BB droid appeared and her life was upended, she saw Unkar Plutt drop one of his innumerous access codes for the half-functional ships he hoarded around Nema. No one else seemed to have noticed. She picked it up, fully intending to return the code to the trader. She had no reason to want to leave, not with her family returning. She didn’t even know which ship the code belonged to. Perhaps her loyalty would be rewarded with an extra quarter-portion. But day after day, she approached his post, hauling her scrap for trade, the code sitting in her pocket. Never once did she even consider offering it to him. Something was telling her to hold on to it. What was the harm? Once he noticed it was missing and that his ship was still here, he would set a new code anyway and the one in her pocket would be useless. 

She never imagined it belonged to the ship that would save Finn, BB-8, and herself as they fled Jakku in terror from the First Order. But when she powered up the ancient Corellian freighter, the code worked without hesitation. 

As they ran across the sands, the Tie Fighters screaming overhead, there was a brief moment where Rey swore the code in her pocket warmed ever so slightly. As they raced inside, Rey dug the code out of her pocket, plugging it into the security system. She could have flown the ship without it but it would have taken longer to override the system. Whatever good fortune had placed the code in her path, it was saving them precious seconds now. 

As the freighter warmed up, Rey touched the controls, her old flying trips coming back to her. She’d never flown a Corellian freighter before. But how different could it be from the others? 

She found out ten seconds later, as she almost flipped them on their back trying to take off. Rey frantically adjusted the controls, her typical sensitivities to engine weaknesses going haywire as the ship lurched and groaned. Its engine must have been in shambles. 

Adjusting the stabilizers, they evened out but the ship only rose a few feet before thumping back down on the half-deployed landing gear. Thinking quickly, Rey adjusted the fuel pump and re-routed the power, narrowly avoiding a complete stall that she felt coming on. The freighter grumbled but steadily rose into the air. Rey grinned as the ship finally responded to her. She still had that golden touch.

Flying the freighter over her routes was another story. Every other second, the ship screamed at her that something was about to blow, something wasn't adjusted quite right.

Without a doubt, this was the most challenging ship she’d ever had to fly. She could swear it didn’t like her. 

But she couldn’t remain focused on the engine and its debatable sentience as the First Order pilots were hot on their tail. Zooming towards the splintered point of one of the Destroyers buried in the dunes, Rey was hit with a moment of clarity. The fighters couldn’t corner. 

She sped forward, the debris looming closer and closer. At the last possible second, she threw the ship into a curve, making a hairpin turn around the engines. One of the fighters broke off, heading in the wrong direction. The other narrowly avoided smashing into the ruins. 

Intensely focused, Rey threw the ship into a difficult tunnel under the hollowed-out body of the Destroyer. A few seconds later, the pursuing ship vanished from her scope as the boy blasted it out of the air. 

The small black ships were built for space combat, not surface maneuvering. Not that this freighter was much better. 

The other ship caught up with them before they had a chance to make it past the ruins and quickly disabled their guns. 

They had to lose it. 

Panting, Rey considered their options. Just over the next dune, another Destroyer poked from the sands. She didn’t know that ship. It was one she’d never set foot in because the top-tier scavengers held priority. 

Rey balked. It was an absolutely crazy idea. It was a sure-fire way to die. She was barely keeping this ship in the air, let alone anything like that…

But a deep sense of calm overcame her, washing away her fear. She knew the skeletons. She knew every twist and turn and every hole in the desert shadows…

Before she could second-guess her decision, Rey angled the freighter and flew straight into one of the massive exhaust ports. 

It was like flying with her eyes closed. But the map was printed on her eyelids. They raced along the ruins of the ship and she just knew. She knew exactly when to drift when they had to be flat to pass. When the turn came, she angled it perfectly. 

Flushed with her success, she pulled out her ace: the feint move she had spent so long perfecting. The freighter fell; its engines dead and the boy blasted their pursuer right out of the sky. Flipping the engines back on, Rey forced the freighter into a roll and they sped off. Alive.

It wasn’t until much later, as Han Solo himself looked over BB-8’s map, that Rey realized she had just inherently known the weaknesses of the Tie Fighters. And she had completely trusted her knowledge of the interior layouts of the Destroyers to navigate that new one. But how could she have just known a Destroyer she had never set foot in before?

To distract herself from that confusing thought, she started silently naming the planets in the projected fragment of the map instead.


	3. Part 3: The Voices

There were languages she learned faster than droids could. 

One day a Twi’lek traveler arrived at Nema outpost. The remote planet had never encountered her species before, as prolific as it was. None spoke her tongue and the poor woman was reduced to sign language. 

But when twelve-year-old Rey heard her lilting pleas for someone to sell her a new compressor for her hyperdrive so she could leave, the language just made sense to her. Already she spoke all the local dialects, binary, and several common Republic languages. Learning new languages was easy for her when she practiced. 

But the closest Twi’lek inhabited planet was two systems away. Further than anyone on Jakku had ever traveled. So no one was more surprised than Rey herself when she began conversing with the poor Twi’lek in simple phrases in her native tongue. The scavenger had listened to the enunciation and rhythm of the off-worlder’s words and picked out phrases and grammar rules. The longer they conversed, the more she seemed to understand. 

Rey was able to get the traveler back on her way (not by selling her a compressor but rather by completely bypassing it and patching a few smaller engine problems along the way). Impressed, the Twi’lek had offered her a chance to leave with her, to explore moons for some kind of scientific study. But Rey had declined. Her family was returning. She had to stay on Jakku. 

Still, the grateful Twi’lek left her with 50 credits as a reward. Rey had planned on hiding it away but Unkaar Plutt had taken it, claiming it as part of her debt to him for his taking her on as a girl. Cheated, Rey retreated to play with her binary coder and practice her droid conversing. 

Eventually the incident slipped her mind. Her memory changed the encounter to one where no language barrier was broken, and Rey simply fixed the ship through sign language, phrases in shared languages, and understanding of gestures. But words from the Twi’lek language occasionally came to mind and she muttered them to herself angrily, her mind consumed with regret that her reward had been taken from her.

She had honestly put the whole thing out of her mind until the moment Chewbacca roared and his language made perfect sense to her. She knew his language. And most people on Jakku thought Wookies were myths. She didn’t have time to ponder just how she had learned Wookie in a single sentence of conversation at the time. After all, she had just met Han Solo and Chewbacca: the greatest smugglers in the Outer Rim.

When she arrived on Ahch-To and the language of the island’s caretakers remained utter nonsense to her, she remembered how easily she had learned the Wookie and Twi’lek’s languages. But whatever these creatures spoke, she had a hard time understanding. During the few days she was there, she listened as much as she could and began to learn small phrases and expressions. But there was no moment of clarity with their language. And while she did learn some of it, by the time she left, she still wasn’t able to apologize to them for destroying the hut she stayed in.

***

It wasn’t just language. 

Occasionally, voices would reach her through her imagination while she was awake and alone. They never gave indication that they were coming, they just crossed her mind like a wave and receded as quickly as they came. Nothing seemed to prompt them and sometimes she went months without hearing any of them.

Most sounded the same: like a gruff but loving father shouting out commands and obeying her every order. Some though, stood out even more. 

A soft wise voice that scolded and guided. A croaking voice that spoke wisdom with odd syntax. 

One in particular rocked her consciousness with unexpected fervor: a cocky, youthful girl who only said one word: “Sky-guy”.

The first time this voice crossed her mind, her eyes began to sting.

As the voice, always with that same word only, continued to drift in and out of her mind over the coming years, Rey began to grow frustrated with it. Who was she? Why didn’t she say anything more than that?

She knew she had heard that voice somewhere before but couldn’t place it. 

Then one day, she realized she’d gone a whole cycle without the voice drifting though her head. 

The realization filled her with a gaping hole and a deep sorrow that never faded.

Only one other voice ever had such an impact on her. 

She could never make out the words, but the sound captivated her. It drew her in and held her close, always wise and kind and fierce and loving. 

Whenever she heard that voice, she seemed to return to herself from a long way away. And always, her eyes were drowning in tears.

***

The worst voices came when she first held the saber. And they never left her.

She couldn’t name the voice that had drawn her to the blade itself. The sound had been somewhere between what she had sounded like as a child and the angry voice of an older man. 

But for the moment she first held the saber, she knew exactly what all those voices were; she knew exactly who she was. But even as that realization washed over her, she heard a horrid sound. A labored, raspy breath that chilled every cell in her body. Pain returned, a familiar, constant pain everywhere in her form, as if she were being pricked with a billion poisoned needles all at once. Her heart, racing with fear, felt heavy with anger and sorrow.

The hallway flickered to life around her, the triangles of Bespin’s floating city haunting her in an endless cycle. She began to run, her footsteps heavy but powerful. But whether she was running from the breathing or towards the boy now holding the blue saber, she could not say…

The hallway collapsed behind her, throwing her free and into a darkened night lit only by cinders. Yoda was speaking, telling her of the Force and its gifts…Luke stretched out his metal hand to forlornly touch R2-D2. 

It began to rain as she stood up, and she cried out in surprise as the man behind her was run through with a pulsating red saber. The dark knights gathered in the gloom before her, standing over the hundreds of corpses that hummed with the dying light of the Force…

One turned to look at her and she could feel his anger behind the mask. She knew him. 

He recognized her too.

“NOO!” She turned again, the darkness fading away, and found herself face-to-face with herself at four years of age. The two versions of herself stood in Jakku’s unrelenting sands, both of them crying as the younger version screamed for her family to come back, as Unkar Plutt dragged her into a life of slavery. 

Older Rey turned and saw the ship departing, flying into a dying sun and vanishing.

“REY?” 

Obi-wan. He sounded surprised, as if he did not recognize her in this form. She turned to run towards him, her feet sinking in the snow, the trees silent and dark around her. Where was he? Could he explain what was happening to her?

With a burst of red energy, the masked boy emerged from behind a tree, his demonic blade humming close to her neck.

She stumbled backwards, falling away from the saber and out of the vision. A single voice chased her out of the room:

“These are your first steps…”

But by the time she turned to see Maz watching her intently, she had forgotten the names of every person in her vision. She was just a trembling girl with too much in her head and nothing that made sense. 

That time, she had run from the voices. She didn’t want any part of the hatred, sorrow, and endless cycle of pain that holding that saber had given her.

As she ran through the forest, more voices came to her. But these were not familiar, and they gave only a single, collective cry of terror before they were silenced forever.

***

On Ahch-To, the voices she heard were just as terrifying. But she was determined to face them. The soft voices in the tree felt older than anything she had heard before. 

They led her to knowledge, something that already felt like hers. So compelling was this feeling that she returned late the next night to scoop all of the ancient books into her bag while Luke slept. She hid them on the Falcon. They would have their time.

The dark, tempting voices that led her underground promised knowledge. But they delivered only more questions. Still, as she stood in the endless mirror and watched herself repeat her own actions over and over, Rey couldn’t help the sense of utter helplessness and déjà vu that pervaded the entire encounter. 

Was this all she was? A cycle of repetitions?

The same voice speaking the same words over and over?


	4. Part 4: The Knowledge

Jakku was a dangerous place for a young girl all alone. While slavery was outlawed after the fall of the Empire, there were less strict laws and definitions around the concept of hard labor and indentured servitude. According to Unkar Plutt, Rey belonged to him, no questions asked, no laws broken.

Unkar was her first (and incidentally, last) “master” but he wasn’t her only “boss”. In the sands around the dry and barren Nema Outpost, those who controlled the food owned the lives of those who did not. Unkar controlled the portions and doled them out according to his perceived value of the pieces his scavengers brought back. The exchange varied weekly for dozens of reasons. 

Others were more straightforward, like Milet with his two portions for a fair day’s work. 

Once the portions changed hands though, it was a tooth and nail scrabble for sustenance. Scavengers fought like dogs for scraps and there was no enforcement of fair play, rules, or anything resembling justice. 

As a tiny girl of barely five, Rey was robbed more times than she had portions to eat. She took to eating the instant powder in pieces, dribbling small drops of water on pinches of it as she ran from thieves. It was the only way to get anything to eat other than the small bits of dry desert vegetables she foraged or grew inside her AT-AT with varying success. 

With such malnutrition, Rey was barely surviving. She probably would have died. But something inside of her was burning and boiling to live. She would not become another nameless grave in the sands.

That desire flamed into a deadly proficiency to fight.

Her staff had been a fortuitous find. At eight years old, elbow-deep in the engine of X-Wing wreckage, something jumped into her hand. It was too long for her to pull it out of the hole she was in but she was unwilling to let go of it. She didn’t know what it was. And that intrigued her. Several hours later, after sloppily disassembling the engine with one hand, she held a small weighty support beam in her hand. Barely four feet long, heavy and black it was functionally worthless and wouldn’t even earn her a flagon of water at trade. But she couldn’t let it go.

She had wrapped the thing in strips torn from her clothes and tied it to her back. 

That night, as she took home her meager 1/16th portion, the thieves began to chase her. The beam banged painfully against her back as she tried to run, as if it was trying to tell her how useless it all was. She could run forever, but the pain would remain. Something had to change.

So she had turned around, one hand closing on the end of her new find and whipped the beam off her shoulders. Her wild swing knocked one of the thieves out cold. The others, utterly stunned, did not chase her as she escaped home and eagerly wolfed down a real meal.

Emboldened by her success, she began to practice with the beam. Motions came to her oddly, the thing unwieldy, unevenly weighted, and heavy.

But the next time the thieves cornered her, armed this time with pipes of their own, the staff became light as a feather in her hands. Strike after strike poured from her as the motions flowed in a pattern unlocked by her desperation. Five of the thieves fell, two smart ones ran. 

Few tried to steal from her after that. And the staff never left her side.

As she grew taller, she screwed and welded scraps to the beam so that it grew with her, still as uneven and unwieldy as ever. She kept it always just several inches longer than she was tall. 

She never seemed to remember the strikes when she tried. But in battle, they came naturally. When forced to engage, she was a deadly warrior.

***

Fighting was the first knowledge she gained. It would have been the last if not for Ben Solo and his unexpected dive into her mind.

When she awoke in the interrogation chair with the masked man from her vision sitting before her, she was terrified. When he revealed himself to be a young, relatively handsome man with sad eyes, Rey had struggled to hold on to her rage. Looking at him filled her with a deep sadness, an unexpected kinship that had her mind reeling and long-suppressed memories surfacing. She knew his loneliness. His pain was parallel to hers.

When he pressed into her mind with that dark field of energy that surrounded him, there was little she could do to keep him from walking in her memories. He saw her loneliness, her desperation, and the island she imagined. Her every feeling was stripped and laid bare for him to read, her secret longings proclaimed by his probing. 

But the moment he reached for information on the map, she found a shred of resistance. He flexed that energy, trying to drive it into her skull. She fended it off, imagining a shield around her memories, around the map that was so clear in her mind’s eye. She scrambled the names of the planets and twisted the memory into a lance. As his next attack waned, she forced her own probe forward. His defenses wavered for a moment, not expecting her attack. Then they closed against her with an undercurrent of trepidation. But she felt him.

He invaded the void of her feelings, spreading darkness and shadows across the empty light. But she fought back. This was hers, he wasn’t going to claim it.

She reached into her anger, her fear of him and probed forward again. It wasn’t enough, he was expecting it. If this was to be a battle of their mutual anger, he would triumph. Luke would be betrayed and hunted down. The Resistance would die. It all hinged on her.

Compassion and resolve burst through her body, so strong they made her fingers twitch. Wrapping those feelings closed with her anger, she leaned forward. This time, Kylo Ren’s defenses shattered at her touch. 

His mind flooded hers; his thoughts, his desires. His fears.

“You…” The words came from her but they had a mind of their own. “You’re afraid…”

His thoughts were clear to her, his one greatest failure shining into her mind like a beacon. She felt him falter, felt the name that was only spoken of as myth back on Jakku rise into the forefront of her mind as an unshakable reality from his. 

“That you will never be as strong as Darth Vader.” 

He released her instantly, his fear coloring the air around them. But she breathed easier than she ever had. She had bested him.

She was stronger.

***

To the people of Jakku (and most of the galaxy), there was only ever one Jedi. Luke Skywalker was spoken of as a myth, an ideal that no man could possibly achieve. They said he wielded unspeakable power, enough that he had bested not only his father, the fearsome Darth Vader but the impossibly powerful Emperor as well. 

Rey used to hear stories of the man and imagine what he could do. He could probably lift an entire Star Destroyer with his finger and choke the life from Unkar Plutt with only a thought. 

As Rey struggled against her bonds, trying vainly to see if she could somehow slip free of them, she considered what Luke would do. Luke probably wouldn’t have been captured to begin with. But if he had been…he’d probably overpower the guard and leave. 

How, she had no idea.

A brief burst of radio chatter distracted her, drawing her attention to the Storm Trooper who waited by the door. She could feel him now, just as she had felt Kylo Ren’s mind. His mind was unprotected, open. 

It took her several tries before a wash of confidence overcame her. She could make this Storm Trooper do anything she wanted. All she had to do was brush the suggestion into his mind. She had done it so many times before. Compared to the mental war she’d just fought with Ren, this was as effortless as painting.

“You will remove these restraints and leave this cell with the door open.”

As the bonds opened, she reached out again, forcing him to disarm himself. Flushed with her good luck and newfound confidence, she snatched up his blaster and ran. She didn’t know where she was going or how she was going to escape. But something was guiding her. 

She raced down hallways, picking them by feel more than thought. She felt troopers coming from several halls away and the lingering shadow of Ren drifting far away on the base. There was something else here too…some kind of light that grew dimmer or stronger the more she wandered…

When she rounded the corner and found Finn, Han, and Chewbacca waiting for her, she nearly cried with relief.

Luck had once again led her to safety.

***

As Rey came to in the snows of Starkiller Base, the first thing she heard was Finn’s screams of pain. She struggled to rise. He needed help. He needed her. 

Then she heard the humming.

It wasn’t loud, nor was it melodious. But it was all she could focus on, even with Finn’s cries. She sat up, just in time to see Ren disarm Finn, sending Luke’s blue saber into the darkness. She felt it land. The humming grew louder. 

Two quick strokes and Finn was down, unconscious in the snow. 

Rey wanted to scream, she wanted to run to him. But she couldn’t move. The hum was calling to her. It was her name, over and over. It was coming from the saber in the snow.

Kylo Ren holstered his blade and extended his hand. Without thinking, Rey raised hers, mimicking his motion. 

Something licked at the edge of her sense of touch, something metallic and warm and so beautifully familiar. The humming paused. 

And suddenly Rey realized what it was. The saber was calling to her, just as it had in Maz’s basement. It was offering her the chance to be a part of this. To save Finn and the Resistance or to walk away. To face the darkness or run from it. It was her choice. 

She could feel Ren as he struggled to call the saber to him, demanding its obedience. It waited patiently for Rey’s gentle grasp of it to let go, to decide once and for all if she would take it or not.

Rey remembered all too well the horrible visions the saber had given her last time. She remembered how she had run, desperate to escape the pain, the cycle that promised no resolution only continuing change. She remembered the weight of her brand new staff as it banged against her back, reminding her that running couldn’t last forever. Not if the pain was to end.

Like she had all those years ago, she had to choose. Run, or face her demons.

But, there never really was a choice at all was there? 

With that simple realization, the balance flipped. The saber ripped free of the snow and flew end over end. Flying past Ren, it jumped straight into her outstretched hand. 

It fit perfectly, singing with the reunion, still warm despite just being in the snow.

Ren stared at her as if seeing her for the first time, his sad eyes burning with some kind of recognition and longing.

Trembling, Rey held the saber up over her shoulder, shifting into a fighting stance. It was now or never. Despite the fear churning in her stomach, the sorrow over seeing Finn laying in the snow, she had to embrace this. She had to fight.

As soon as she ignited the blade, everything fell away. It was hers. The blue glow awakened courage within her that she hadn’t even known she had. This was her place, holding Anakin Skywalker’s weapon, defending that which she loved. Just as the staff had all those years ago, the saber filled her with battle fervor. With knowledge of endless battles fought; victories won and atrocities committed by this very blade. All of it hers to wield.

She attacked first, forms and patterns flowing through her. Some were from her staff, others came from the saber itself, wrapping her in sensations, the ebb and flow of battle.

While her new knowledge was formidable, Ren was still a very capable opponent. He chased her through valleys and between trees, the dark energy that surrounded him nipping at her heels and spurring her onward.

As the planet rocked and split under them, Ren trapped her under his blade, forcing her to the edge of the new chasm. His physical strength pinned her in place, his demonic blade scraping against the pure blue light of hers. Rey panicked. She was stuck. 

Ren took this opportunity to speak to her. “You need a teacher!” He yelled. “I can show you the ways of the Force!”

The word evaporated her fear. 

“The Force?” Maz’s words rang in her head. 

“Close your eyes…feel it.”

She slammed her eyes shut, trying to focus even with death so close. It came to her instantly. The saber’s calling to her, the voices, the void inside of her, the lonely island in the endless ocean, her abilities to see things before they happened…her knowledge of the past…

It wasn’t luck. It was this force….THE Force. And it was calling to her, stronger and stronger every day.

It was here with her. It always had been. 

The Force wrapped around her like a second skin, binding her to the saber, to the snow, to Ben and to every living thing in the cosmos. She felt them. 

She breathed with them.

Her eyes flew open. Drawing on the power all around her, she fought back. 

Kylo Ren faltered again and again under her newfound strength. Rey gave herself completely to the Force; to her overwhelming compassion for Finn and the Resistance, to her blinding rage at Ren for killing Han Solo. Her strikes were perfect and powerful, unbalancing him and overpowering even his connection to the Force. 

She kicked Ren, sending him sprawling. The white-hot rage swirled inside of her, giving her power, feeding her skills. In that instant, she could have sworn the air around her was boiling hot and drier than the desert. Instead of the soft sounds of falling snow, a hissing, melting sound rang in her ears. Cinders brushed along her skin.

Ren struggled to his feet, weak and unsure. This was her chance. 

Raising the blade behind her head, she pounded his blade overhead, again and again, each one giving her more power. She grabbed his hand just as he tried to wrestle the blade from hers. Calling on her every last bit of anger, she forced his hand down, pressing the blade into the snow. Steam swirled around them. For a second, she swore within the fire and cinders, there was a hint of red lightning and wind. The flash of pure white blades. A flicker of something passed her consciousness. A deep sorrow among her constant rage. He would have to die. She could end it now, he was nothing against this power she had. But if she struck him down now…in anger…in this powerful rage…what would she become?

A dark shadow passed her consciousness, a raspy breath that hurt, a wound that never healed. 

_No._

Not again.

Banishing her rage, she struck, slicing Ren across the face. He fell, defeated but alive. 

A shiver ran through her as the snow returned to her consciousness. The ground before her fractured, the planet splitting into a chasm that kept Ren far away from her. The saber hummed at her again. 

She had chosen correctly.

***

Ahch-To was filled with knowledge. She knew this before they even landed there. The familiar island that she had imagined so much in times of sorrow whispered to her of secrets. But it spoke none of them. 

Even as she explored, she seemed to only find more questions. 

As she left to confront Ben Solo, to see if she could bring him back to the light, she remembered the books. They were a last link in case she should not return. They carried the soul of the island. The knowledge she had been promised in the cavern. Much like the saber, they were just waiting for her to accept them. If only she knew how.

As she hastily shoved the books into their new home on the Falcon, one of them fell open to a random page. As she picked it up, a single word in the ancient language of the text stood out to her:

_REVAN_

Rey did not know what it meant, but the word sent a deep shiver through her entire form. 

***


	5. Part 5: The Whill

Sometimes, during her lonely nights on Jakku, Rey would lay in the darkness with her eyes closed. She couldn’t explain it, but sometimes when she was quiet and calm like this and listened to the sand and the wind and the distant ships departing, something changed. Her perception went white and filled her whole being. It didn’t feel like anything, if pushed to describe it, she would probably call it a void. Yet another lonely place where she reached out and found nothing. Like a hole in the universe. Maybe once it had echoed with life, with companions. But none were to be found there now.

Still, this place always remained. Whenever she felt she had to, she could reach out into it. It offered no peace, only hope.

It wasn’t until she met General Organa that she ever saw any purpose in this lonely inner place. As the Resistance rushed Finn away to tend to his wounds, an exhausted Rey stayed behind her saber hooked on her belt. The crowd shifted and parted and suddenly the sensation of calm washed over her. She looked up and there was the famous General Organa, staring at her as if she had just found someone she had been looking for for a long time. They didn’t say a word to each other; everything seemed to be passing between them in emotions: exhaustion, relief, and an overwhelming compassion. But the moment Leia reached out and pulled Rey into her arms, the lonely void inside of her burst to life with another. 

She embraced this woman she had only heard stories of, whose husband she had watched die and whose son she had nearly killed and felt only contentment. There was life in her void again. Leia was another synapse in that vast, empty expanse in her mind. Now that there were two of them, she could share again. 

They held each other for a long time, perhaps both seeking comfort in finally finding someone who answered the lonely echoing calls in that void, someone else who was searching for even the whisper of a companion in the quiet, empty world. Rey felt the void shift and from then on, she could always reach into that place and feel Leia within. 

While on Ahch-To, she received the ability to do this with Ben Solo as well, even going as far as to be able to touch his hand and see him while star systems apart. Then she learned what the void was. What it had always been. It was the shared connection of the Force between those who could sense it.

There were so few.

***

During the several days she spent on Ahch-To, Luke passed on very little to her. After their lesson on the cliff, he seemed wary of her and her emotions. But even being on the island taught her much. It was as if the ground itself wanted to feed her knowledge and teach her. She felt the Force everywhere whenever she closed her eyes. In places, it was bright and warm, in others dark and foreboding. It called to her like an old friend.

She practiced her mediations whenever she could, feeling the push and pull of the dark and the light, as even and unyielding as the waves upon the island’s shore. When Luke refused to show her how to use the saber, she resorted to practicing what little she did know. 

Much like with her scavenging, the knowledge was just there. The blade called to her, sang for her touch. Everything she had absorbed from it at Starkiller Base had remained in her mind, alongside all the visions she had back in Maz’s basement. The saber had unlocked them all for her, including things she thought she had forgotten like all her dreams and the voices from Jakku.

She didn’t know what any of it meant. But she had the information now.

Curious, she began to focus on the voices and dreams she could remember, seeing how much she could draw out consciously. Most of it was battle knowledge and emotions but once, a face flashed before her eyes: a young Togruta warrior. The voice still eluded her but she knew who it was. “Sky-guy” girl. Her heart warmed at this. She was glad to know her even if her voice was gone.

She no longer felt alone on Ahch-To with all of the life around her and the voices in her mind. The porgs and other creatures screamed with life, the ocean pounded out a steady heartbeat and swarmed with living things. Even with Luke sulking around and watching her silently from afar and Ben Solo randomly invading her thoughts, she felt loved and challenged here. 

The only time she felt truly alone was when she descended into the cavern. 

Everything from the surface of the island fell away when she entered the water. She could no longer feel the porgs crying as they flew about or Chewbacca working on the Falcon. Even the comforting sensation of the ocean waves vanished down here. She did not reach for him, but she knew that her strange, powerful connection to Ben was also cut off down here. 

She was entirely alone.

The reflective wall of the cave called to her. In the dim light, she saw a figure approaching her in the stone. Cloaked in mist and shadows, the form came closer. Her heart began to race. 

Was this her family? Her parents? She thought she could see a man…a tall, strong man who radiated with the touch of the Force…

But when the figure finally came into view, it was only herself.

***

When Rey finally climbed out of the cavern, soaking wet, physically exhausted and emotionally drained, she lay upon the rocks and let the incoming tide lick at her feet. 

Rey reached out into the Force, comforted slightly by the return of her awareness. She felt for every living thing on the island, grounding herself again by knowing their presence. 

A porg fluttered down near her but seemed to sense the unease and anguish on her. It flew away, silent for once. 

Even with the relief of reconnecting to the living, Rey’s heart was heavy from her experience. Even with all this life around her, in the end, she would only end up alone. Her void would one day be empty again, silent and echoing only with the ripples of her actions.

_The face of the young Togruta came to her again; a constant companion who suddenly vanished, a gaping hole that festered and left her vulnerable. The soft, wise voice tore her into pieces as he yelled at her that he loved her, his voice breaking with grief. The potent voice that always made her tear up was crying and she distinctly heard her words for the first time: “…you’re breaking my heart…you’re going down a path I can’t follow…stop, stop! I love you!...”._

All of these losses tore at her, made her feel cold and angry as one by one, they abandoned her, leaving her with nothing but the constant pain and rasping breath. Her parents had abandoned her, Jakku had left her alone and cut off from the Force for most of her life. Rey clenched her fist and the stones around her cracked as the Force responded to her anger. The ocean surged, a massive wave breaking alongside her prone form. 

_A cackling voice praised her as she choked the life from a struggling soldier. A young man bowed his head before her asking reverently: “what is thy bidding my master?”… She choked men to death with barely a thought…threw the reverent man out of a window…the old man who had once crippled her fell under her blade…_

_A much younger-sounding Luke told her to let go of her hate._

Rey inhaled deeply, feeling the anger and hurt licking at her insides like an untamed fire. With an enormous force of will, she let them go, banishing her feelings on the tide. The ocean calmed. Her heart settled.

The girl from Jakku opened her eyes. She could not do this alone. Not if she were to break the cycle at last.

And the longer she stayed on this island, the more the Force seemed to be pointing her towards the same person.

***

Ben turned on Snoke. 

Rey had sensed his conflict, known his pain as assuredly as she had his fear the last time they met. This time, he fought beside her. They eliminated Snoke’s red guards, trading weapons as easily as they did words and instinctively relying on each other. The moment the last guard fell, Rey ran for the screens, employing Ben to stop the attack. There was still time to spare Leia and Finn and all those that she could feel on the ships.

But she knew the moment she turned around that he would not. His face was set and for the first time since she’d known him, he felt calm. Certain in his path. 

He told her of her past, of the truth she had known and fought to prove wrong. Her parents were nobody. They had tossed her aside like scrap. She didn’t even know where she had come from.

She was Rey of Nowhere.

Rey the Unnamed.

The pain burned inside her, curling at the edges of that festering wound where the Togruta had been…a brief flare of irrational anger overtook her followed quickly by overwhelming sorrow.

Ben offered her companionship, a chance to burn everything and rebuild it all together. It was a dark and tempting offer. Her anger wanted it dearly.

But _she_ had never wanted that. She cared too much. Ben may have severed his connection to those who loved him but Rey could not. Every time she dipped into her rage, it was for Finn, for Leia and the Resistance. It was for the faceless beings she saw in her dreams that needed protection and guidance. It was for the dozens of children who stood at the edges of her void, reaching out but unable to feel her reaching in return. She could not burn all that down. Not again.

As Ben held out his hand, all she saw were the dark flames of the magnificent temple burning, the explosions as Alderaan, Jedha, and Scarif were destroyed. All she heard was the screams of the Hosnian System as everyone in it died instantly. 

She couldn’t cause such suffering. Every time someone tried to use the Dark Side to rebuild the galaxy, anguish rippled through the Force, hurting everything within. It had happened for centuries without fail. Could no one else sense it? She could. 

She would not be the source of such pain.

So she reached out to take Anakin’s saber back. Ben fought her and this time, the saber was caught between them. Rey had no pre-destined claim to it this time with how quickly she had aided Ben’s quest for power. This time she had to earn it back. 

The two most powerful Force-users in the galaxy pulled on the weapon, their conflicting ideologies pulling for control of it. To hold it was to have an invaluable tool, a symbol of change. It had been a shaper of the galaxy since its creation. This was the weapon that had seen the beginning and the end of the Clone Wars. The blade that had killed the Sith Count Dooku and destroyed the Republic Jedi Order. The saber that had failed its master on Mustafar and nurtured the rise of Luke Skywalker. The blade that carried the legacy of the Skywalker name and the triumphs and tragedies therein. It belonged to both of them. But it could not serve two masters.

Under such enormous pressure, the legendary blade of Anakin Skywalker fractured. Then exploded.

Rey was blown backward, colliding painfully with the display screens. But she remained conscious.

Ben was not so lucky. He sprawled on the floor, out cold from the intense detonation. She was alone. 

Rey approached him, her tears from earlier still sticking to her cheeks and sweat from the battle cooling on her back and arms. She stood above the man she believed she could save, the boy walking the wrong path because of his desire for change.

She hadn’t been enough to save him. He’d just used her to achieve his own goals. Luke had been right.

Rey lowered her head. “I’m sorry…” She wasn’t sure who she was apologizing to.

The pieces of the saber leapt into her hand without a thought on her part. As she ran for the elevator, she called Chewbacca for an extraction. 

The cold pieces of the saber weighed heavily on her as she escaped.

***

The Battle of Crait was hardly a victory. By the time she and Chewbacca (and the stray Porgs they had seemingly adopted on Ahch-To) arrived, the Rebellion was already in need of evacuation. Kylo Ren had unleashed all of his resources against them, cornering them inside the base. 

Rey fired at the walkers, marveling at how just hours ago, she had thought she could have ended all this. Ren wasn’t going to change, not because of her. 

He wasn’t going to back down either, that much was clear. They just needed a distraction, something to give the fighters below time to escape.

Rey wished she had more skill in the Force. She wished more than anything that the saber in her pocket was functional. But it was not. All she could do was provide cover as the resistance retreated back inside the walls of their bunker.

She fired constantly, many of her blasts finding vulnerable targets. The Force was guiding her, helping her see the weaknesses in the walkers, the gaps in the enemy’s formations.

But just one fighter wasn’t enough. Chewbacca was forced to retreat, leading their pursuers down a shaft of salt caverns, Rey firing as best she could in the dark.

As they faced a lull in the fighting, a new sensation nearly overwhelmed her. A strong, compassionate presence swarmed into her void, like Starkiller Base restoring a sun it had depleted. It was so intimately familiar. 

Inside of the void, Rey felt Leia reach out in all directions, her own sensitivities triggered by the sensation. She shared Leia’s smile.

“Luke.”

His presence sang in the Force, surrounding him like a veil. He was here…he had come after all. Only not in physical form. 

Rey figured out his plan almost instantly and shouted at Chewbacca to locate the escaping fighters. The Falcon wheeled around and began to scan the surface, scouting for the Resistance.

As the First Order focused all their efforts on the Jedi Master, Rey scanned the frosty salts below. If only they could find a back exit, maybe they could be saved….maybe Finn and Leia would be alright.

The sight of crystal foxes darting across the rocks below caught her attention. She directed Chewbacca towards them and raced down the ramp as the Falcon landed. They had mere moments before Ren realized Luke’s trick. Already the two were engaged in combat.

Rey skidded to a halt in front of a massive pile of rocks. A single fox wriggled from the depths of the pile and looked at her expectantly. Rey smiled. 

“It’s just lifting rocks…”

She extended her hand, the Force swirling around her. 

As she focused on the rocks, Luke vanished from the battlefield but Rey still felt him. She reached out as he had taught her. Deep in her void, she felt Leia do the same. The General reached for her hand and together, their consciousness whirled through space.

In that instant, Rey — with Leia holding on behind her — was transported back to Ahch-To, back to the overlook where Luke had shown her what the Force was. The last Jedi sat there now. Alone and at peace, he stared into twin sunsets. 

Rey felt the Force ripple mightily and the new light faded from her inner sense. Tears rolled down her face. Luke was gone. He had joined the Force. Instead of feeling him in the void in her mind, now she felt him everywhere. 

His wisdom guided her hands as the rocks levitated effortlessly. She parted the dense conglomeration…and saw Finn waiting for her on the other side. He was safe. He was awake. Her focus broke and the rocks slowly fell away. Finn ran forward, his face set. She fell into his embrace, feeling him enter her void as well, bathing it in a fierce, soothing light. 

She hugged him back just as fiercely. She would never lose him again.

The Resistance, small as it was, swarmed quickly onboard. As Chewbacca prepared the Falcon for take-off, Rey felt Ben tugging on the link between them. She hesitated at the ramp of the Falcon, sensing his intent. He was making one last plea, a desperate offer for her to join him. He was the only one who could match her. Together, they would be unstoppable. 

She paused, making sure to remember this connection, the feeling of being bound so closely to another as powerful and as alone as she was. Another with a destiny as heavy as hers.

Then, without a moment’s consideration, she severed it.

***

As the Falcon flew the remnants of the Resistance to safety, Rey sat alone. She held the pieces of Anakin Skywalker’s lightsaber in her hands, feeling the dead, cracked kyber crystal within. It was gone, the comforting sense of connection to the weapon had fractured and died. Her link to it was broken. But she still had everything it had taught her, all the knowledge and visions it had given her. 

The great darkness of the past, the shining hope of the future. The need not for the end of the darkness but rather the balance between them. 

Luke was right. The Jedi, devoted as they had been to the light, had blinded themselves to the true nature of the Force. It was not good or evil. It just was. And those who could sense it had the duty to find that perfect balance. The will of the Force.

Rey pulled the pieces apart carefully until the crystal emerged. She scooped it up softly, cradling it in her hands. It gave her one last whisper of its past: a temple on fire…a young Luke holding it for the first time…

Then it was silent. Rey closed her fist around the crystal as she fell into meditation. Scenes from her dreams and snippets of her visions and the voices in her mind drifted to her from the recesses of her mind: a heavy mask on her face, a cold dread in her heart, the swing of a bright red lightsaber, an overwhelming compassion beating back the darkness inside her, the shock of blue electricity running through her body, the face of her son, the smile of Obi-Wan Kenobi… 

_“…he is the Chosen One…he will….bring balance…”_

_“What will happen to me now?”_

_“…you will be a Jedi Anakin. I promise.”_

But the Jedi were gone now. She was the last person alive dedicated to the balance of the Force. She had to start again. And this time, she had to get it right.

She was the Whill. The last of the old ways of the Force and the pioneer of the new ways.

As she finally accepted this destiny, Rey felt all of her confusion and uncertainties melt away: the dreams, her golden pilot touch, the voices in her head, the knowledge she carried…all of it was a part of this. It didn’t matter who her parents were or why she had the skills she had. All of it would guide her forward. As it always had. 

She had much to do.

The books waited, safe in their drawer of the Falcon. And far away in an unknown system, her new crystal slowly grew, preparing for the day she would finally arrive for her rebirth. 

_Fin_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So at some point this became a reincarnation theory link between Anakin, Rey, and Revan…not sure if I planned that or not. But Revan needs to be part of the canon and what better way than as one of Rey’s past lives? He was the Jedi who achieved a perfect balance between the light and the dark after all and it seems Rey is heading that way as well. 
> 
> I apologize for any inaccuracies from The Last Jedi; I have only seen it once. 
> 
> This fic will be marked complete but if someone sends me a compelling prompt, I could be convinced to add to it or post a one-shot in my reincarnation-verse. Please give me some time to respond to requests; I am very slow!


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